Thursday, September 8, 2011

The decentralized internet

"And the concept of a decentralized web is gaining traction: more and more people realize something has to change. The cause for this trend is obvious: the number of data security and privacy disasters that were made public has spiked in recent times . In April ’11 for example an update to the security terms of service of the widely used Dropbox tool revealed that contrary to previous claims, Dropbox Inc. has full access to user data.
An analysis of the changes to the Facebook privacy policy over time paints a gloomy picture of how the world’s largest social network changed 'rom a private communication space to a platform that shares user information with advertising and business partners while limiting the users’ options to control their own information'.
With more and more of our personal data moving to centralized servers or 'cloud services' – a term that should be used as an euphemism – we’re no longer in control. But there is hope in sight: there are dozens of projects out there that try to stop the trend of centralization and data consolidation."

Have the days of getting useful resources from big companies in exchange for letting them rifle through your information gone away finally? Why not just get the useful information without having to have commercial snoops spying on you as well? Hopefully these new efforts will save us.